


The Wind Carries Your Name

by Grand_Phoenix



Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [4]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Bad Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Drama, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Tragedy, the Matthias Shaw mentioned here is not the real one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grand_Phoenix/pseuds/Grand_Phoenix
Summary: ...but it will never know the truth. (Who would believe you, anyway?) [Varian, in his final moments on the Broken Shore]





	The Wind Carries Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> From the Fanfiction.net notes, 12/17/2017:
> 
> This was only written because I was leveling Kajaar the draenei monk [one of my alts] and decided to do the Broken Shore scenario because he was, at the time, level 98 and I didn't want to go through Draenor (he was in Timewalking!Cata gear). When I watched the ending cinematic again, I was reminded of the sneaking suspicion that Varian realized what the Horde was dealing with when Sylvanas sounded the retreat. I don't know if I'm the only one that thinks that, but I'm going to list this as this being influenced/inspired by headcanon just in case.

She wouldn't leave them behind like this. She wouldn't think to raise the alarm, not when every able-bodied soldier the Alliance and the Horde had to offer was putting their life, their heritage, their homes on the line all around them to stop the Legion here and now before it can even begin. Before it bursts through their forces like water against an overburdened levy and spills unchecked, uncontained, over the Broken Shore, out to sea, and floods all of Azeroth in darkness, bloodshed, and hellfire.

But she did; Sylvanas blew the horn, and everyone on top of that ridge, dark rangers and val'kyr and the Dark Lady herself, are pulling back.

"I knew it!" Genn snarls, and it's a wonder Varian can hear him over the din of battle and chaos. "I knew we couldn't trust that bitch!" His eyes are sharp and feral-bright, his snout curdled around knife-sharp teeth, the fur around it flecked with blood black and red and purple. They coat his paws in muddy splotches up to his wrists. His breathing is ragged, shallow, and quickens with all the haste of a wolf struggling to keep stride with his pack at the makings of another hunt that has been presented before them, foaming at the mouth for blood denied and a hunger only hatred can slake.

Varian glances at him, face pinched tight and teeth clenched so hard it hurts his jaw, and thinks, _It can't end like this. We have to hold the line. This is our world, our home. Why would you do this?_

"We have to go!" Genn cries, snatching him by the crook of his arm and tugging him urgently. The air, already redolent with sulfur and ozone accompanying fel magic, adopts another layer, one that is thick with cordite as the _Skyfire_ opens fire on a swarm of felbats from the sky. "Without the Horde, we'll be overrun! Come on!"

Again, like a gong ringing in the stillness of dawn: _It can't end like this._

Varian makes to move—but he twists around to face the ridge. This dark, jagged outcropping where Sylvanas and her troops had occupied, where these red-skinned, winged monstrosities scream triumphantly and seem to blot out the Fel Storm and the daylight by the dozens. He looks and sees, and no one will ever know this is the clearest his mind has ever been, the most sure and most fearful he has ever felt in his life.

Where Sylvanas had been now stand the Burning Legion—row upon row of felguards and fel lords, doomguards and terrorlords, wrathguards and man'ari eredar sorcerers and warriors, shivarra and nathrezim and pit lords, observers and inquisitors, jailers and sayaad and many, many more. The first rank to come upon the precipice leap down or stretch their wings and take flight…and they keep on coming.

They are infinite.

_Oh,_ Varian thinks, and somehow it feels like that's the only thing he can think of. _Oh._ Then: _So that's why—_

"Varian!" Genn's voice, barely discernible above the roar of the _Skyfire_ 's engines.

The _Skyfire_ …

Varian takes in a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding and stands up straight, Shalamayne in hand. "Get to the gunship," he whispers hoarsely, and allows himself to turn away from a march that moves rigidly and like clockwork, their pace unhurried.

They run past battered, broken bodies, prostrated in their own blood. Some are on their backs, propped up by ered'ruin blades, blank eyes turned toward the blotted heavens.

_I should've known they were infinite!_ one part of him despairs impulsively. _They're legion! It makes sense! How did I not notice it sooner?_

_Nothing mattered in the end,_ another part of him says, dull with heartache and defeat. _With or without her, we're going to fall._

_We're going to die,_ says another. _We're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to—_

Varian ignores the blather and keeps going.

They reach the rope ladder that drops overboard. Genn leaps up and snatches a rung with one paw, grabs the one above him with another, and climbs. As soon as he's high enough, Varian sheathes Shalamayne and starts moving just as the _Skyfire_ readjusts her thrusters and lifts away from the Shore. He dares not to look down, doesn't trust himself to look anywhere else but the hull of the gunship and _climb just climb don't look just keep climbing_ , he has to get to the deck and get them as far away from here and put some distance, any distance, between them and the Legion, anything room so that they could turn their guns on them and slaughter as many as they can—

He looks, not down but to his right, and feels all the breath escape him like a deflating balloon. It's almost enough to make him loosen his grip.

The Broken Shore is overflowing with demons, and from the portal Gul'dan has conjured within the Tomb of Sargeras, what Matthias Shaw stated (and confirmed by Malfurion and Tyrande) at the emergency meeting to once be the Temple of Elune more and more emerge, weapons brandished, felbats and doomlords rising in the air as infernals plummet from it.

The wind tosses his hair everywhere, flying in his eyes, but the image is already seared into his mind, branded so hotly in a way not even the warm comfort of the elements or the healing touch of the Light can hope to erase. _This is what you warned us about. If you hadn't sounded it, then—_

There is thunder, and green light that is powerful and blinding in its radiance; and his thoughts are interrupted by an abrupt lurch as the gunship tilts to starboard. Varian yells and swings in mid-air, legs kicking and flailing for purchase in a frantic dance with the ladder, and for one harrowing, stomach-clenching second he truly believes he will let go and either fall to his death or fall and be caught in demonic talons and eviscerated as a gruesome meal.

He doesn't fall, manages to lunge up and snag the rung with his other hand. This time he keeps his eyes on the _Skyfire_ as it struggles to right itself, listing hard to port, the hand of the gargantuan, mechanical fel reaver digging furrows into the deck. He glances at it, and only just and enough, because he's heard the stories before. Heard them from adventurers and mercenaries who had traversed the Dark Portal and into Outland of the machines that walked Hellfire Peninsula, emitting low, droning groans that could be heard from all throughout the wasteland. He had scoffed at these people then and brushed off these telling as mere tall tales, because he had never seen demons mix sorcery with technology, had never seen them artillery cannons and walking mechanical suits as tall as the Cathedral of Light and spaceships that could fire fel fire from orbit and dispatch spires that could call upon even more enemy soldiers in a matter of seconds.

He would have never believed them until now, when the fel reaver calls again and tugs on the gunship again. His heart skips very briefly, and he's only vaguely aware it does. Then it doubles, triples in his chest so quickly it aches, makes him think he's going to suffer a heart attack, and tightens his hold on the ladder.

"Varian!" Genn cries, and he looks up to see the man shift from wolf to human and lean forward. One gloved hand reaches for him, arm stretched as far as it can go, half his body hanging off the railing. One false move, one good hard pull is all it'll take for Genn to topple over, send more screaming soldiers sailing past him, and if neither is careful the Alliance will be bereft of two kings. Tess and Anduin will be so woefully unprepared, dealing with a war unlike anything they had ever faced before, and already he can tell this time around Legion's efforts will eclipse what Arthas and Deathwing could not in the years before.

_"Varian!"_

The fel reaver pulls again, and more people tumble overboard and fly toward oblivion. The _Skyfire_ 's engines scream, output even more power, but it's barely moving if at all, there's not enough firepower in all of Azeroth that can take that damned thing down—

Varian takes one final glance at it. Really looks at it, how cold and sightless it is, how it knows only what its masters have programmed it to do.

But he does, it is the warmth of Shalamayne, of the thought of his ancestors that came before him, at his back that gives him all the peace he needs.

Varian removes one hand from the rung to dig into the leather pouch tied to his hip and draws out the wax-sealed scroll. Summons what little strength he can afford to spare, sucks in a breath, and lunges toward Genn.

He destroys the salvation presented to him as he thrusts the scroll into the man's waiting palm—not with a climatic bang, but a soft whisper of canvas. "Give this to my son," he says. It's all he can say, because he wrote this scroll with only Anduin in mind, poured all his thought and feeling into it, of everything that has been and the pieces that had to be picked up, reclaimed, and be imperfectly remade. These are the words he could never openly confess so easily, so pure and true, but binding them together are words of caution, of a drowning, heady certainty that comes with toeing the line between life, death, and the in-between that comes with long-lasting injury. They are the words he could not dare give voice to, not when the Legion made their stand on Outland and attempted to bring Kil'jaeden through the corrupted Sunwell, and still not could do so this time around when he had boarded the _Lion's Oath_ just before it disembarked from the harbor.

But he has finally written them. He writes to warn Anduin not only of the dark days ahead of him but what he must do to ensure that peace is won and secured, and that is to fight for it, for if not with words then with the might of arms and loyalty of the Alliance as his blade and shield.

It is all he will ever be able to say, because for all his martial prowess and connection to Goldrinn, he is a mortal man and not of the Bronze dragonflight. He does not have the power to go back in time and warn the Alliance and the Horde of what will happen to them.

Most of all, he cannot tell them that Sylvanas sounding the horn may have saved everyone's lives, or as many as her call would allow time to escape.

_Who's going to believe you?_ a tiny voice sneers, and it may as well be the loudest sound in the world.

Varian ignores it, just as he ignores Genn's shocked, despairing cries when he lets go of the ladder and falls away.

Arms outstretched, breathing slow, heart thrumming, it almost feels like he's flying.


End file.
